


The Toymaker's Student

by CloudDreamer



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Body Horror, Dissociation, Gore, Humanized Toy Soldier, Identity Issues, Mechanization, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Stranger-Typical Horror, Teeth, Toy Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23928352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: theyarenotwhattheyarenotwhattheyarenotwhattheyarenotwhattheyare
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	The Toymaker's Student

The Tomaker’s Student used to have a name of their own. The Student was a bright child, their master tells them, brimming with potential. They could’ve been anything. That made it so much more special that they were with her instead of being anything. True art had to come from sacrifice, she promised, and the Student listened. 

They stare at their reflection in the mirrors for hours. Sometimes they trace the lines of stress on their own skin, just to remind themself that they’re real, that their body is theirs, but sometimes they just stare. They don’t know if they blink. Was their hair always that shiny, always curled so tight? Did it bounce like that? What was their name again? Jessica? Lana? 

No, they don’t need to worry about names now. They’re the Student. They’re the one who’s going to take over for their master, the Toymaker herself, when she passes away. But she doesn’t seem to plan on dying any time soon. It’s like for all the life that’s not in the Toys was sucked up by her, and the Student doesn’t know if they’re really an heir or the last part of her set. Round out the group. 

They can’t say anything. The Toys will tell her everything they let out of their lips, even if they don’t think any of them are there. The Cowboy says it hates her, but the Student knows that’s just because she wants it too. On some level. They’re all her puppets, all her little pieces, and sometimes the Student wakes up with the certainty that they’re just here to torment them. 

But then they see the look on her face as she chisels away the wood on their Toy Archivist's chin, and they know she loves them. She loves her Toys, and she loves her Student, and that isn’t as reassuring as it should be. The Toys obey any order she gives, but the Student is hesitant. Weak. Their body has limits. 

They age. They’re the only fragile one on this Toy Boat. When they stop by the market, there’s always the possibility that some local wishes to steal away a Toy, and when that happens, their master is always so cross. She comes back with her straggler Toy, covered in something red that the Student knows they should recognize. The Student knows it should mean something to them that those times that she is closest to them, they are covered in that same red. At least, they think it’s the same red. It doesn’t smell the same, they think, but they don’t know what it’s supposed to smell like. 

When the Toys are cut, all that comes out is sawdust and gears. When the Toymaker is cut, her skin shuts before anything can come out. When the Student is cut, something else happens. They don’t know what it is. They don’t like it. They told her they didn’t like it once but she said it was for the art, so that must’ve made it okay. This had to be okay, because if it wasn’t okay, nothing was okay. 

The Toy Princess played her games with the Toy Boat and the Student watched. They watched with the eyes that weren’t glassy, eyes that followed what they looked at. When they stared at themself in the mirror, that was one of the things they wondered about. What was wrong with them, that their eyes moved? Why did the liquid rise in their eyes? Why did they shake when their master handed them a tool, told them to cut out a chunk of wood or of flesh? There wasn’t a difference. They needed to obey. They obeyed. 

They watched them play, with their too dull eyes that fit into their head so naturally, and they didn’t let a sound escape their lips because she wanted quiet today. Their lips, which covered their teeth, which were theirs and theirs alone. They pretend that all the teeth their Toys leave them aren’t the same as the ones in their mouth, don’t match perfectly. Once they looked too close, found the same chip in the molar on the floor as in their mouth, and they’d stayed there, staring at it until their master came and stole them away, into the workshop. 

She was hungry, and the Toy Archivist needed that perfect shade of red. 

It was almost perfect. They were all almost perfect. All of them but the Student. The Student wasn’t wood. How could she get inside them, make them perfect? She couldn’t purge the last bits of them they’d buried deep bellow the surface, they knew. There was nothing left for her to take. 

The Toymaker is benevolent, they remind themself. The Toymaker gives life. The Toymaker creates art. Art comes from pain. Pain is beautiful. 

They think there is nothing more for their master to take. 

They are wrong. When it is time for them to graduate, they are still barely an adult. Barely had a chance to live. Their master takes them by the hand and leads them into the workshop for the last time, but also for the first time.

Toys are made from wood and plastic and all things discarded from humans. They are never warm. They do not feel when she sinks her teeth in. One thing they lack, though, is a heart. And so the Student would be their heart. Not alive, not dead, but somewhere in between for the rest of eternity. They screamed all through the process, as she tore their chest open and exposed those white brittle sticks. She planted gears beneath their skins, and their flesh grows back where she breaks. 

They’re the Toymaker’s Student, and they are the heart. They hear the click of gears in the marrow, their body clicks and creaks louder than the silent Toys. Where the others play their instruments, made of sawdust and plastic, they can sing, but they can't scream. The only sounds that escape past their teeth are pleasant, affable, all yes, ma'am, and at your will, ma'am. 

They're special. They're deserving of all her gifts, especially when those gifts hurt, because that pain makes them so beautiful. Take them out, wind them up, play a little song, and she'll never go hungry again. They can hurt and hurt and hurt till the end of time, but they'll never die, and that's the beauty of the Student. Put them back in the box when she's done, now they're drained dry, and then they'll be ready to play again by the next day.


End file.
